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﴿ فَاسْأَلُوا أَهْلَ الذِّكْرِ إِن كُنتُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ ﴾

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What is the ruling on delivering the Friday sermon in a language other than Arabic?

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Question : He asks: Is it permissible to deliver the Friday sermon in a language other than Arabic, specifically for non-Arabs?

Answer : Yes, there is nothing wrong with it. That is, if a person is preaching to a group of people who are not Arabs and there are no Arabs among them, he should preach in their language, except for the Qur'anic verses, which he must recite in Arabic, because reciting the Qur'an in a language other than Arabic is not reciting the Qur'an. The Qur'an was revealed in Arabic. So if you are in a community where there are only people who do not understand Arabic, preach to them in their language. The whole place knows English and nothing else. What language do you preach in? It is strange, my brothers, in English. Okay, do they know American English? In American English. Okay, yes, what about it? It is different if a man knows it who knows both languages. May Allah bless you. Okay, in Persian, if everyone you have there knows only Persian? What do you do? In Persian, is that clear?
Except for the Qur'anic verses, which must be recited in Arabic. What is the evidence for this? The evidence is the saying of Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He:
And We did not send any messenger except [speaking] in the language of his people to state clearly for themوَمَا أَرْسَلْنَا مِن رَّسُولٍ إِلَّا بِلِسَانِ قَوْمِهِ لِيُبَيِّنَ لَهُمْ
[Ibrahim 14:4]
So there is no clarification except in a language that is understood. The preacher is only clarifying the rulings of the Shari'ah to people, admonishing them, encouraging them, and warning them. So if he preaches to them in a language other than theirs, what is the benefit?
And language is not a set of words used for worship. For this reason, we said that the Qur'an must be in Arabic because it is an object of worship. But these are words whose meanings are delivered so that the listener understands the preacher. Have you seen, now we are in an Arab community, and a person comes to deliver a eloquent sermon, one of the most eloquent sermons, but in English. What do you benefit from it? They would say, this is gibberish to us, and he leaves, there is no benefit in it. This is also the case for non-Arabs who hear it in Arabic; it is like gibberish to them. Therefore, the preacher must be among a people in the language of those people. Yes.
Source قناة «فضيلة الشيخ محمد بن صالح العثيمين»، لقاء[21 من 25] ما حكم إلقاء خطبة الجمعة بغير اللغة العربية؟!! الشيخ ابن عثيمين - مشروع كبار العلماء — youtube.com

The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.

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